Student blogs

“Who’s John?” someone asked me in September last year. Me and my friends from class had been mentioning him a lot; he seemed to be a legend. I laughed. “That’s the name of our classroom!”

Of course, it wasn’t “our” classroom. But during the very first course of the programme, almost all our lectures took place in that room, so it felt like it was ours. I think, we even joked about hanging up pictures on the walls.

Our other courses later on were all in other rooms, mainly on the other side of campus. But today, for the very last session of the year, we were back at John’s. After all these months, it felt almost nostalgic to be back in there.

While from the outside, it must have looked like no time had passed between the first course and now, a lot has changed. We only have one exam left before it’s summer and then the first year of the toxicology master’s is already over. So, in today’s blog, let’s unwrap why the time passed so quickly. I’ll first tell you what we did in semester 2 (details of semester 1 are covered in an earlier blog post) and then dive into this academic year as a whole.

Quick recap of semester 2

The second semester started with a short course on laboratory animals in science that we had together with the biomedicine master’s. It covered regulations, ethics and important facts about different animals and their needs.

After that, we had the lab course, where we learned methods for both dry and wet lab and got to know many types of data and how to interpret them. This course was built around a big lab project that included everything from (transcriptomics-based) hypothesis generation to experiments in the lab and finally data interpretation, lab report and peer-review. As part of this course, we also visited different imaging facilities around KI to see how they work.

The last course of the semester (and the academic year) is a course on risk assessments. Here, we got to know the regulatory side of toxicology and learned how authorities assess the risk a compound poses for human health. This included e.g. lectures, but we also visited some of these authorities and got to hear how they work. And as a group project in this course, we got to do a risk assessment ourselves – which we presented today at John’s.

The year as a whole

Both the first and the second semester were full of interesting courses, and I really wouldn’t be able to pick a favourite (so don’t ask me that please). They were all unique in their own ways, and even though they focused on different topics within toxicology, I felt like there was always the red thread linking everything together.

The courses also varied in their designs. Of course, they all contained lectures and group work, but here are some unique things that I associate with the different courses:

• Introduction course: of course the Finnhamn trip
• Target organ toxicology: PBLs (Problem Based Learning = group projects revolving around solving a problem)
• Histopathology course: more independence (main assignment was an individual report that we could work on in our own time, since this course took place over Christmas)
• Animal course: joint with biomedicine master
• Lab course: hands-on because it revolved around one big lab project
• Risk assessment course: study visits and many practical exercises

Having such distinct courses makes me look back at them as if they are separate chapters that were different in their focus but all belong to the same book.

Wrap-up

I think time passed so quickly because it was filled in a good way. I like what I’m studying, and I’m surrounded with lovely and inspiring people every day, which makes learning even more fun.

Academic highlights (so things besides the social stuff) have been the practical experiences throughout all courses; discussing real-life scenarios, planning and conducting experiments, doing exercises and calculations in class, getting to know different research facilities (both in the animal and the lab course), going on study visits to public agencies, …

Other special moments that come to mind when I think back of this academic year are: the Finnhamn trip during the first week of the programme, a potluck lunch that our class held early this year (thanks to our class reps who organised it <3) and many fun and inspiring conversations with classmates and friends both in and out of uni.

All this being said: Thanks for reading! Wish me luck for my last exam and see you after summer!